Chapter 7 - Claire’s Second Lie
Claire admitted she had returned six months earlier.
That was her second major lie.
She had not returned to the mansion for the first time this week.
She had been here the night before William died.
Ethan’s anger became strangely calm.
“Why?”
“William contacted me.”
“After nine years?”
“Yes.”
“What did he want?”
“To apologize.”
Ethan almost smiled.
“Try again.”
Claire looked at him.
“To help me expose the Curator.”
Better.
William had finally realized someone had manipulated his archive.
He contacted Claire because she was one of the earliest victims.
Together they compared records.
They discovered the same person had influenced Claire’s disappearance, William’s suspicion of Rachel and several financial decisions surrounding the Mercer family.
“And Rachel?”
Claire’s face changed.
That was the sentence on the recording.
What we did to Rachel.
Claire explained that before Rachel died, she asked Claire for help disappearing.
Ethan stopped breathing.
Not dying.
Disappearing.
Rachel believed the Curator had begun watching Lily.
She wanted to draw attention away from her daughter.
Claire arranged money and identification.
But Rachel never used them.
Two weeks later she collapsed at home and died at the hospital.
Ethan had been there.
He had seen her body.
There was no ambiguity.
“So what did you do to her?”
“We planned to fake her disappearance.”
“Why did you say neither of you would survive if I knew?”
“Because we lied to you.”
Claire’s voice broke.
“Rachel and I decided you were safer not knowing.”
Again.
People deciding for Ethan what truths he could survive.
“What happened to William?”
Claire said she left the mansion shortly after midnight.
William was alive.
The following afternoon, his housekeeper found him dead in his study.
Heart failure.
Natural causes.
At least officially.
Claire had wondered ever since whether the Curator killed him.
“Why not tell me?”
“Because I found something that night.”
“What?”
Claire reached beneath her shirt and removed the crescent necklace.
The pendant opened.
Inside was a tiny memory card.
Ethan stared.
“You’ve had evidence around your neck this entire time.”
“Yes.”
“And you waited until now?”
“Because William told me not to give it to you until you stopped trusting me.”
Ethan frowned.
“That makes no sense.”
“It does if the Curator’s method depends on trust.”
William believed Ethan could solve the archive only after learning not to divide people neatly into truthful and deceptive.
A liar could tell the truth.
A guilty person could be innocent of the crime being investigated.
A loving person could cause enormous harm.
Claire had lied repeatedly.
But some lies had protected evidence.
Others had protected herself.
The distinction mattered.
They opened the memory card.
William had copied fragments of the original ledger.
Names.
Dates.
Payments.
At the center of several pages was one recurring initial:
E.M.
Ethan Mercer.
Claire watched him.
“It isn’t you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You were twelve when the first entry was made.”
Ethan looked closer.
E.M. appeared years before he was born.
So not Ethan.
Another Mercer.
He thought of his family tree.
His grandfather Edwin?
No.
Edwin’s middle initial was J.
Then Lily, quietly sorting photographs beside them, said:
“Maybe it’s a girl.”
Both adults looked at her.
Ethan had unconsciously assumed male.
Mercer family.
Initial E.
A woman.
His father had a younger sister.
Evelyn Mercer.
Aunt Evelyn.
Sweet, quiet Evelyn who sent Lily handmade birthday cards.
Who had spent thirty years teaching music in Vermont.
Who cried at William’s funeral.
Claire shook her head immediately.
“No.”
Ethan noticed.
“You know her.”
“I met her once.”
“When?”
“The night William died.”
Ethan’s skin prickled.
Claire had omitted yet another person.
“What did she say?”
Claire looked disturbed.
“She told William to stop digging.”
“Why?”
“She said some graves protect the living.”
Ethan reached for his phone.
Before he could call Evelyn, Lily held up an old photograph.
“Daddy, look.”
Evelyn stood beside Thomas and William as young adults.
All three smiling.
But behind them, reflected in a mirror, stood a fourth person holding the camera.
Ethan enlarged the reflection.
A young woman.
Claire.
Except the photograph was dated twenty-seven years ago.
Claire would have been seven.
The woman in the mirror looked at least thirty.
Same eyes.
Same mouth.
Same crescent necklace.
Claire stared.
May you like
Then whispered:
“That’s my mother.”
